1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a mobile telecommunications device with an improved browser for navigating between pages at different network addresses and home pages.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional mobile telecommunications devices such as telephone handsets, have been designed primarily for speech calls and have only a limited capability for handling data. For example, in GSM, a short message service (SMS) has been provided to permit the user to send and receive short text messages that can be transmitted through a cellular public land mobile network (PLMN). More recently, recommendations have been developed to provide a wireless application protocol (WAP) to promote common standards and specifications for data services that operate over wireless communication networks. WAP enabled telephone handsets have been developed which allow the user to access remote servers. Data content is provided in a mark up language, similar to conventional hyper text mark up language (HTML) known as a wireless mark up language (WML), which is configured to allow a page of HTML data to be displayed as a deck of individual cards which are of the size suited for display on the relatively small display screen usually available on a mobile device such as a cellular telephone handset or personal digital assistant (PDA).
The data is supplied by WML servers at individual network addresses, with a homepage which act as an entry point to a particular site together with further pages or decks with individual addresses that can be navigated by the user. To this end, the mobile device is provided with a browser to display the data.
A WML server can be accessed by dialing an individual telephone number associated with a WAP gateway which acts as a proxy server between the WML server itself and the mobile device, which acts as the client.
Newer, faster data services for mobile communication devices have been developed, including I-Mode, GPRS and UMTS which operate in a generally similar way, with the mobile device acting as client to remote servers, and a browser to display the accessed data on the mobile device. The browser that is used for mobile telecommunications devices is conventionally known as a microbrowser, which is controlled by keys on the mobile device. Instead of using a mouse-driven cursor, a focus region is provided, which can be navigated around the display by keys which may include a scrolling key on the mobile device. The keys may be so-called soft keys which can be preprogrammed to perform different functions depending on the display provided by the browser. Conventionally, one of the soft keys allows the user to move backwards through previously visited network addresses. Also, a bookmark list may be stored so that individual network addresses can be readily accessed.
In conventional Internet browsers for use on personal computers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator, back and forward buttons are provided in the browser display, to be actuated using the mouse and associated cursor. The cursor is moved using the mouse to overlie the button concerned, for example, the back button, and the left mouse button is then actuated so as to actuate the back button on the display, so as to allow the user to navigate between previously accessed network addresses. The forward button is operated in a similar way. The back and forward buttons may have an associated facility to display a list of the previously visited sites from which the user can select an individual address using the cursor. Also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,854,630 discloses a browser in which a list of visited network addresses is displayed when placing a cursor above the back or forward button in combination with long presses of either of the buttons. However, the mouse and cursor based functionality of a conventional Internet browser is not appropriate for a microbrowser used in a mobile communications device and so the speed of browsing with a microbrowser is significantly impaired as a result of the inability to readily access previously visited network addresses.